


like flowers in a book

by you_idjits



Series: love, in fire and blood [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 'cause i'm a sappy schmuck, Dean and Amelia interacting because that's important to me, Dean and Cas cuddling, M/M, brief mentions of eating issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-29 19:59:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3908689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/you_idjits/pseuds/you_idjits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Amelia visit a farmer's market. Also, Cas falls asleep on Dean's shoulder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like flowers in a book

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was written before the last three in the series, and was edited/redrafted many times. Some of Dean's thoughts may feel out of place, given some of his developments in previous codas. Sorry.

Amelia is in the Bunker again. She’s still a new presence there; Sam goes to Louisiana some weekends, but she hasn’t come back here since that first meeting. Sam says she’s feeling a little overwhelmed by it all. That said, she’s been here two days now and she seems to be doing fine. Dean hasn’t talked to her much, because. Well. It’s a little awkward. She has trouble with him being alive, and he has trouble with her being around. They’re working on it.

They do a group movie night. It’s kind of like a double date, almost. Dean and Amelia crack beers, Sam puts on _Blade Runner_ , and they all pile onto the same worn couch. Cas’s hip presses up against Dean’s, warm through the denim, and Dean has to take a lot of deep breaths.

It’s. It’s not easy. He’s still getting used to this casual intimacy. The physicality of it is new and challenging for him. Dean’s past relationships have all been a very different kind of physical, of course, but he can’t bring himself to go there with Cas yet. If he can’t deal with sitting next to the guy, he probably can’t deal with–

Yeah, anyway.

It gets worse when, halfway through the movie, Cas falls asleep. His head nods forward first, and then slumps to the side, his face pressing into Dean’s shoulder. It’s kind of endearing, actually. Dean has to look away for a bit, has to stare at a fixed point on the ceiling and breathe. His hand flails for a while before curling uncertainly on his knee.

“You okay, Dean?” Sam asks over Cas’s slumped back.

“Yeah,” Dean says, but it comes out rough. He tries again. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“He fell asleep?”

“Think so.”

“I can wake him if–”

“Nah, it’s– it’s fine. Dude needs his beauty rest.”

Amelia is very, very determinedly staring at the screen, for which Dean is very, very grateful. Sam gives him a reassuring smile and then looks away too.

Dean tries to focus on the movie. He tries. But Cas is snoring softly into his shoulder, and the beer is making him woozy, and before he knows it he’s falling asleep too.

He startles awake some time later. The living room is dark, and Sam and Amelia have disappeared. “Cas,” he says, nudging Cas with an elbow. “Come on, buddy. Time for bed.”

“Dean?” There’s a tenderness in his tone that only makes an appearance in the moments after waking.

“Yeah, hey. You fell asleep.”

“Mmm,” Cas says. Eloquent. He pushes off Dean’s shoulder, only to keel over onto the empty couch cushion on the other side.

“Hey, hey, bed. Doesn’t a bed sound nice right now?”

“Couch.” Cas shifts until he’s properly stretched out.

“Cas,” Dean groans. In the darkness, he crawls over Cas’s knees and hips, braces one hand on either side of Cas’s face. “This couch is tiny.”

“Big enough for two.”

“Yeah, if we cuddle. I don’t cuddle.”

Cas opens one eye, lazily. “You don’t?”

Dean thinks about that for a bit. He shoves Cas to the side and makes a space for himself. “Fine, whatever. Just tonight. No telling.”

“Sam doesn’t care,” Cas says, because he knows what Dean’s talking about. He always knows. He shifts so that his head is on Dean’s chest, his hands curled between them.

Dean hesitates, then curves his arms over Cas’s back. “’Night, Cas.”

Cas doesn’t say anything, which maybe means he’s fallen back asleep. Dean follows.

 

The morning creeps on Dean, taking its time. Cas is warm and heavy against his chest. Huh. There’s a feeling, a new feeling, winding its way through Dean’s muscles. An ease. A kind of tired contentment. Sharing a bed with Cas has always been a sort of Herculean task. He has to wrap his head around it every night, has to talk himself back into it, has to remind himself that he wants it. But today, he wakes up with Cas in his arms, and it’s okay.

“Hey,” Dean says. He rubs his hand over Cas’s shoulder. “Come on. We should…”

Cas shifts, buries his face in the collar of Dean’s shirt. His ankle bumps into Dean’s socked feet. “Is it morning already?”

“Yeah. Come on. Sam and Amelia will be up soon.”

The thing is, Dean hasn’t talked to Sam about this. About him and Cas being– yeah. It’s not like Sam doesn’t know, because of course Sam knows, but it’s just. Dean has made a concerted effort to avoid confrontation. He wants this thing to be just his and Cas’s, just for a little while longer.

So he shifts out from under Cas and sits up. Oh, God, his neck, his back. He’s getting too old to sleep on couches.

“Fuck, dude, we should have gone to bed.” He stretches his arms over his head, tries to work out the tension in his back. There’s a kind of dull pressure behind his forehead. Whatever comfort he felt with Cas in his arms dissipates as his body wakes up.

“Time?” Cas asks. He curls into the warm spot where Dean just was. His nose scrunches up.

Dean digs his phone out of his pocket, from where he slept on it. “Ugh, too early. Come on, I’ll make you breakfast.”

“Not hungry,” Cas mumbles, and Dean feels his good mood threatened.

“Uh, Cas.”

“Later.”

He pushes down the tension he still feels every time Cas turns down a meal. He’s getting better at accepting Cas’s autonomy, but it’s still. Hard.

His mood teeters on the edge. He closes his eyes. “Cas,” he says. “Come on, man.”

There’s a pause, and then he feels Cas’s hand on the side of his face, fingers combing through his hair. He opens his eyes and looks down at Cas.

“Okay,” Cas says, face soft. “Breakfast.”

Yeah, it’s still hard, but Dean’s getting better at telling Cas what he needs. Cas is getting better at listening.

He makes breakfast, French toast with far too much cinnamon, servings for four people. He barges into Sam’s room without knocking, the door banging back against the wall. Sam is up like lightning, gun out and cocked and pointed at Dean’s face.

“Hey,” Dean says, undaunted, “breakfast’s on.”

“Dean?” Sam lowers the gun, rubs at his face. “What the hell, man?”

Dean just laughs and kicks the bed. “Come on. I made French toast.”

Amelia shifts and rolls over, two skinny, pale arms sticking out of the sheets. She sits up. Her hair is a mess of curls. “Sam? What’s going on?”

“Ugh. Dean was being an asshole, as usual.”

“An asshole who very generously made breakfast for everyone,” Dean says. “Hi, Amelia.”

“’Morning, Dean,” Amelia says, in the tone of someone who is obviously not a morning person. She sits up. “Oh my God, is that a gun?”

Sam looks at the gun in his hands. “Hey, wait, it’s just–”

“Oh my God,” Amelia says, “nope. Nope. Not this early in the morning.”

“I can explain–” But Amelia is already leaping out of the bed. She’s wearing plaid pajama bottoms and a Grateful Dead t-shirt. Very domestic. Ugh, Dean thinks, Sam’s really found the girl this time.

“Sorry,” Dean says. “Didn’t mean to cause trouble in paradise.”

“Don’t you apologize, Dean,” says Amelia. “You’re not the one who had a _gun_ under his pillow.”

“Well, actually, I do keep a gun under my–”

“Okay, okay, that’s enough. Let’s go eat breakfast.” Amelia waves her hands aimlessly, nervously.

“Yeah,” Sam says. He puts the gun down. “Did you say French toast?”

So they eat breakfast, the four of them, in the library. Sam and Amelia bicker over the gun, but it’s light-hearted. Dean gets it, gets why Amelia is struggling to adjust to this life. For him, things like this are meaningless. He’s had a gun under his pillow since he was six. There are certain givens in this life, certain standards, that he doesn’t think twice about anymore. The arsenal in his trunk. The Devil’s Traps over every door. The scars on his knuckles.

 It’s probably good that Amelia’s here to remind Sam and Dean of this, to remind them how stark-raving-mad their life is. To have sane, normal-person reactions to this fucked-up life.

 “This is awesome, Dean,” Sam says in the brief moments between forkfuls of food. Amelia hums her agreement. It is pretty awesome. He hasn’t done this much cooking since they were kids.

Cas only picks at his food, which Dean pretends not to notice.

“I should make a grocery run today,” Dean says. “We could do something nice for dinner.” He wants to be a good host. He knows Sam wants him to make a good impression on Amelia. This matters to Sam.

“I’ll come with you,” Amelia says. That’s not really what Dean was going for, but he catches Sam’s eye and nods.

So they go grocery shopping together, and it’s not all that bad. They talk a little, and Dean learns that Amelia likes George Thorogood, and that her dad was in the army, and that she also has a fear of flying. Actually, they make a pretty good team in the grocery store.

She helps him carry out the groceries. When Dean pops the trunk, Amelia catches sight of the Devil’s Trap on the lid. “What’s that? I recognize that.”

“Devil’s Trap,” Dean says. “Common defense. We keep them over a lot of doorways in the Bunker. And the dungeon, of course. Oh, has Sam taken you to the dungeon yet? Bet you two get up to lots of kinky–”

“What does it do?” she interrupts.

“It’s all in the name, sweetheart. Traps demons.”

“And why do you have one in the trunk of your car?”

Dean laughs. “Comes in handy. This is a pretty spacious trunk, you know.”

Amelia makes a face. “I see.” She starts loading her groceries in, and Dean thinks it looks pretty funny – grocery bags under a Devil’s Trap. Better pin down those satanic powdered donuts.

Halfway back to the Bunker, Amelia puts her hand on Dean’s arm and says, “Stop the car.”

“What?”

She nods out the window. “Come on, pull over.”

Dean squints. There’s nothing there, just some Saturday farmer’s market and a playground. “What do you want?”

“The farmer’s market,” Amelia says. “I like farmer’s markets.”

“Hell no,” Dean says. Those places make him think of the awful months fighting Leviathan when all he could eat was kale and whole-wheat bread.

“We could pick up some fresh fruit,” she says. “You could make pie.”

“No,” Dean says. “I’m not gonna make a fucking pie.”

“Cas would like it.”

Dean hesitates. He drums his hands on the wheel and thinks about that. “Fine,” he says. “But we’re gonna be quick. And no kale.”

Amelia smiles, and he pulls over, and they go to the goddamn farmer’s market.

They walk through the aisles together. Dean doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Amelia stops to chat at a few stands. She picks up a jar of honey and a bag of apples. She buys two oranges and hands one to Dean.

He peels it, gets citrus juice under his nails. It stings the cuts on his hands, the ones still healing from the last hunt. Still, it’s a nice orange, fresh. Maybe farmer’s markets aren’t _awful_.

But this is weird. This is weird and unfamiliar. Being here with Amelia, his brother’s girlfriend, eating oranges and buying honey.

He has to tell her. He has to make her understand why he and Sam can’t do things like farmer’s markets.

“Amelia–” he starts, and then cuts himself off. She stops, turning to look at him, questions in her eyes. He sighs. “We need to talk about this.”

“About what?”

“It’s just, you’ve gotta realize that this life sucks. It’s grisly and gory and gruesome. It takes everything you have. It mugs you in a dark alleyway and then shoves you down in the mud. And then it kicks you a few times. And then it takes out a Colt 1911 and–”

Amelia puts her hand on his arm. “I get the idea.”

“Right.” Dean drops his hands. “Well. What I’m saying is, I’ve killed a lot of people. Fathers and mothers. Children. And then I’ve, I’ve let die a lot more. Ones I couldn’t save. I don’t know if there’s a difference. I probably haunt a lot of people’s nightmares.” He glances at Amelia. “I’m not trying to scare you off, I swear I’m not. Sam would kick my ass if I did, or at least he’d try.” He pauses. Tries to figure out what he’s saying. “You’re a brave lady and I like you. And because of that I have to make sure you know what you’re getting into.”

“I do,” she says.

“No. No, listen to me. Sam could die any day. And maybe he’d come back, maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he’d go to Hell, maybe to Heaven. Anything’s possible. You gotta be ready for that. You gotta be ready for the shitstorm. You hear me?”

Amelia picks up a bouquet of daisies. “What about these, hmm? I bet Cas would like these.”

“Amelia–”

“I hear you, Dean. I do. I just think you’re being melodramatic.”

“I’m not–”

“I know, I know, it’s serious. It is. But we’re in a farmer’s market, and Sam probably wants broccoli and cauliflower for dinner. There is nothing here that can hurt you. Okay? Not in this moment.”

Dean straightens. He looks at the honey stand and the old lady buying cheese and the boxes of ripe red tomatoes.

“Gimme those daisies,” he says, grabbing them from her hands. He doesn’t think Cas likes daisies, or any kind of flowers, but he might. He might.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Mouthful of Forevers](http://clementinepoetry.com/post/49054187544/i-am-not-the-first-person-you-loved-you-are-not) by Clementine von Radics.  
> Thanks to Tasha and Onja for betaing...? I'm not sure who actually read this piece; it was a while ago, but I assume both of you? You are both lovely, as always, and I am grateful, as always.


End file.
